IMPACTS OF FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY ON URBAN-RURAL INCOME GAP IN THE CONTEXT OF GREEN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Oversized urban-rural income gap (URIG) would inhibit the course of rural green sustainable development (GSD), detrimental to the realisation of the overall GSD strategy. As financial technology (Fintech) has become a national strategy, exploring impact degrees of Fintech on the URIG is of great practical significance to China for solving the problem of excessive URIG and even realising the GSD strategy. This paper applies the method of instrumental variables to conduct an empirical analysis of the panel data of 31 provinces across China from 2011 to 2018, and results show that Fintech would dramatically enlarge the URIG in China, and that its influence in the eastern, central and western regions is heterogeneous.